Anual spending on cloud hardware infrastructure will surpass the $1 billion mark by the end of 2016 in the emerging markets of Central and...

Anual spending on cloud hardware infrastructure will surpass the $1 billion mark by the end of 2016 in the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA), according to the latest research from international market research agency IDC.

“Cloud uptake is on a growth trajectory in CEMA, as many organizations are coming to the realization that they can benefit from a full-fledged cloud implementation, be it private or public,” says Jiri Helebrand, server systems and infrastructure solutions research manager with IDC CEMA.

Cloud spending on networking, security appliances, server and storage hardware in CEMA totaled $638 million in 2013, far outpacing spending on traditional datacenter environments. IDC predicts a year-on-year spending increase of 20.5% in 2014, due to pent-up investments in infrastructure following the end of the economic downturn. Private cloud (both hosted and on premise) is taking the lead, a trend predicted to last until 2018, mostly due to the lack of large public-cloud providers in the region.